Wordsworth's Prelude of 1805

Tuesday 26 October 2010 saw a marathon event in the Faculty of English. Faculty members read all of Wordsworth's substantial poem "The Prelude" live and online. The entire reading took approximately ten hours.This reading is a deliberate sequel to our reading of Milton's great poem "Paradise Lost" (twelve hours long) in 2008, which was part of the celebrations for Milton's four-hundredth birthday.Wordsworth fought as a poet to break free from Milton's influence, and yet he chose to write his greatest poem, "The Prelude", in a style which imitates - and in some lines, directly borrows from - Milton's poem.Yet the topic is totally different. "The Prelude" is an autobiography, and surveys Wordsworth's childhood, time in Cambridge and early travels. It thinks through his ideas about the imagination, individual poetic genius, revolution and youthful rebellion, writing's relationship to everyday life, the awesomeness of nature, and in particular the Lake District (which Wordsworth and